Banco BTG Pactual S.A. (BVMF:BPAC11)
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Apr 29, 2026, 10:16 AM GMT-3
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Earnings Call: Q4 2024

Feb 10, 2025

Operator

Good morning and welcome to the fourth quarter of 2024 results conference call of Banco BTG Pactual. With us here today we have Roberto Sallouti, Renato Cohn, and Julia Rocha. We would like to inform you that this event is being recorded and all participants will be in a listen-only mode during the bank's presentation. After Banco BTG Pactual's remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session for investors and analysts when further instructions will be given. Today we have a simultaneous webcast that may be accessed through the website www.btgpactual.com/ir and the platform. There will be a replay facility for this call from today. Before proceeding, let me mention that this call may contain forward-looking statements relating to the prospects of the business, estimates for operating and financial results, and those related to the growth prospects of Banco BTG Pactual.

These are merely projections and, as such, are based exclusively on the expectations of Banco BTG Pactual's management concerning the future of the business. Such forward-looking statements depend substantially on changes in market conditions, government regulations, competitive pressures, and the performance of the Brazilian economy and the industry, among other factors and risks disclosed in Banco BTG Pactual's filed disclosure documents and are, therefore, subject to change without prior notice. Now, I'll turn the floor to Mr. Roberto Sallouti, who will begin the presentation. Mr. Sallouti, please go ahead.

Roberto Sallouti
CEO, Banco BTG Pactual

Thank you very much. Good morning to all of you that have joined the call. Thank you for being with us for the 2024 results call. If we could please start turning to page three, where we would like to mention the highlights of what we thought were the major points of last year's results. First point is we had record revenues and net income for the year, 23.1% return on equity. We continue to benefit from operational leverage. And even though we had a very challenging market in 2024, I think once again we were able to demonstrate the all-weather business model that we have at BTG Pactual. We had, going to point two, very strong net inflows for the year, BRL 247 billion of net new money. We reached a total between asset management and wealth management, BRL 1.9 trillion , an increase of 21% in the year.

Going to the third point, our credit portfolio grew 29% in the year, and we were able to continue with attractive net spreads, benefiting from the diversification of products, segments, and geographies that we have in the business, and also from the ongoing reduction in the cost of funding. So even though markets tightened overall, our cost of funding also tightened, and with the benefit of having diversification to allocate risks where we think there are good risk returns, we were able to keep attractive net spreads. Our investment banking franchise had a very strong year, growing 30% year over year, and this was made with main contributions from debt capital markets and a strong M&A activity. As you all know, we had very weak equity capital markets last year.

Finally, we continue to improve our product and service offering, and we did many acquisitions last year, such as Órama, M.Y. Safra, which will become our U.S. based bank, Sertrading, which is a new line of business, Julius Baer in Brazil, which helps us to increase scale in our family multifamily office business. We're very satisfied with the strategic moves we also did last year. Regarding 2025, we continue to expect ROE expansion this year, the same thing that happened in 2023 and 2024. Turning to page four, we see a bit of the numbers for the full year. Total revenues of BRL 25.1 billion, 16% growth in the year, adjusted net income of BRL 12.3 billion, an 18% growth, a bit above revenues. This demonstrates the operational leverage of the platform. We finished the year with 23.1% return on equity.

As you can see, this is a sequential increase from 21, where we were at 20.3, then 20.8, 22.7, and now 23.1. Turning to page five, we talk a bit about the quarter itself. We had revenues of BRL 6.7 billion in the quarter, 19% growth year over year, net income for the quarter of BRL 3.3 billion, and a return on equity for the quarter of 23%. Turning to page six, we talk a bit about the investment management franchises. For the fourth quarter, we had BRL 50 billion of net new money. Our wealth management business grew 26% year over year in assets under management, reaching BRL 901 billion. And our asset management business grew 16% year over year, finishing the year at BRL 992 billion. And we're also very pleased to announce that we just recently surpassed the BRL 1 trillion mark in our asset management franchise.

Turning to page seven, we talk a bit about credit and funding. Our unsecured funding base grew 30% year over year to BRL 265 billion. We finished the year with equity above BRL 57 billion and a capital ratio of 15.7%, and we grew our credit portfolio 29% in the year, finishing with a total credit portfolio of BRL 222 billion, of which BRL 26 billion in the SME segment. On page eight, we show the traditional format that reports quarterly and annual numbers, so once again, I think not to be repetitive, I'm just going to point out the main points in these pages that were not in the previous ones, so once again, revenues of BRL 6.7 and net income of BRL 3.3 for the quarter, adjusted net income per unit of BRL 0.86. We have a cost income that remained stable in the quarter, 38.5%, comp ratio of 21.6%.

We finished the year with BRL 647 billion in total assets, as previously mentioned, the 15.7% capital ratio, and total shareholders' equity of BRL 57.5 billion. In the quarter, we also announced a JCP distribution of BRL 1.72 billion. We have a very low VaR in the quarter of 13 bps. This is probably the lowest VaR in a quarter that we ever reported. It's just a consequence of what we mentioned before of a very challenging macro environment last year. Turning to page nine, we talk about the full year results once again. Total revenues of BRL 25.1 billion, BRL 12.3 billion net income, adjusted net income per unit of BRL 3.24. Our cost income for the year once again demonstrates the operational leverage, where we finished with an adjusted cost income of 37.5%.

I think it's important to mention that our shareholder equity increased 16.4% year over year, finishing at 57.5, which at the end of the day is basically the return on equity we reported, the net income reported, minus the JCP. For the year, we finished with an average VaR of 21 bps. Finally, turning to page nine, where we show the revenue breakdown per business unit, we see a very healthy growth year over year in investment banking, in corporate lending, asset management, and wealth management, and a more challenging environment for sales and trading, where we actually had a decrease year over year. This is not something that we expect to continue. Quite the contrary, we think we expect to go back to growth in 2025, even though we still expect a challenging macro market.

We just think that what we saw in 2024 with the level of more contained level of activity, very challenging to allocate VaR, and the VaR that we allocated did not produce the returns expected. We don't expect that to repeat itself in 2025, and just one last comment here. If you exclude participations and interest in other, we have basically reached the distribution that we expect to continue growing this way that we've been signaling to our investors for the last few years, so excluding participations and interest in other, our corporate and investment banking, what global companies report as corporate and investment banking is 41% of our revenues. What traditionally is called, let's say, markets in global banks is 29% of our revenues, and investment management is 30% of our revenues.

So we always signaled that we expected that over time, investment management and corporate and investment banking would become the most significant contributors to revenues, and I think we're finally seeing that next year. Even with sales and trading recovering growth and recovering from last year's results, we expect this trend to continue over the next few years. With that, I pass the floor to Renato Cohn, our CFO, and after that, we can do Q&A.

Renato Cohn
CFO and Investor Relations Officer, Banco BTG Pactual

Okay. Thank you, Roberto, and good morning, everyone, so moving to page 12, we look at our investment banking results, where we see that we have very strong revenues, reaching BRL 510 million during the quarter, and that represents a 34% increase when we compare with the third quarter of 2024. Looking at full year results on the right side of the chart, we see that revenues reached BRL 2.1 billion, which means a 30% growth increase when we compare to 2023, with record revenues coming from DCM transactions in the domestic market and some additional contributions from international markets. Overall, during 2024, we concluded more than 140 deals in local markets and 15 in international markets, all in DCM, and we also saw a contribution from M&A deals throughout the year, with more than 60 deals being advised.

Finally, we received from Global Finance several awards recognizing our efforts and achievements in sustainable finance, so we won Best Bank for Sustainable Finance, Sustainable Finance Deal for the Year, Best Impact Investing Solution, Circular Economy Commitment Award, Best Bank for Sustaining Communities in LatAm, Sustainable Finance Awards in Brazil, and Best Impact Investing Solutions globally, and also, we kept our number one position in volume and number of transactions in M&A, both in Brazil and in LatAm, and also number one position in number of transactions and in volume in ECM here in Brazil. Moving now to page 13, we look at our corporate lending and business banking business, where we can see that we had record revenues both for the quarter and for the full year with strong portfolio expansion and enhanced asset quality.

Revenues reached BRL 1.83 billion during the quarter, growing close to 7% when we compare to the previous quarter and 35% when we compare to the fourth quarter of 2023. When we look at full year results in the bottom left chart, we see revenues of BRL 6.5 billion during 2024, which represents a healthy growth of almost 27%. Looking at the evolution of our revenues for a longer period of time, we see that since 2020, we increased our revenues by four times, which means a compounded growth rate of 42%. Looking at the portfolio development on the two slides in the right side of the chart, we see that we reach a total credit portfolio of BRL 222 billion, which represents a growth of 5.4% during the quarter and a 29% growth when we compare to the end of 2023.

Important to say here that we managed to grow our portfolio by maintaining the same overall credit quality and stable spreads as we continue to benefit from significant funding cost reductions, as well as diversification into new products, new segments, and also new geographies. When we look at the evolution of our portfolio for the longer period of time, which you can see in the bottom right chart of the slide, we see that we basically tripled the size of our portfolio, which means a compounded growth rate of 30% since 2020. When we look at the SME, we see that our SME book grew slightly during the quarter, reaching BRL 26 billion, which represents a 27% growth when we compare to the fourth quarter of 2023.

We continue to leverage our banking business backed by top-tier service and also top-tier client experience while we continue to enhance our product offering. Our portfolio exposure ex-Brazil continues to expand and now represents more than 20% of our total exposure. Looking now at our sales and trading, we saw good performance in 2024, supported mostly by client activity, as we had our lowest risk VaR allocation, as Roberto just mentioned. Revenues reached BRL 1.55 billion during the quarter. That's a 7% decline when we compare to the previous quarter, but in line with the overall results during the last four quarters. During the fourth quarter, we recorded again our lowest VaR, just 13 basis points during the quarter. That's our lowest historical VaR. For the full year, revenues reached close to BRL 6 billion. That's a 4% decline when we compare to last year.

And here also, we recorded our lowest yearly VaR, only 21 basis points. Looking at the longer period of time on the right part of the slide, we can see that since 2020, we doubled our revenues, while at the same time, we reduced our VaR by half, showing the importance of our client franchise increasing contribution to sales and trading, the contribution to sales and trading revenues. And as we continue to develop our business lines, we closed the acquisition of Sertrading, adding a new service focused on foreign trade solutions and also expanding our client base. Going now to our asset management, here on page 15, we see that we had record revenues for the quarter and also for the full year, supported by consistent growth in assets under management and administration, and also market share expansion.

Revenues reached BRL 661 million, which is an increase of 6% during the quarter, based on the increase of management fees, but also supported by the second-half performance fees, which we recorded in December. Full year revenues grew 29%, reaching BRL 2 billion 389 million. And when we look at the longer period of time, which we can see in the bottom left part of the slide, we see that revenues more than doubled since 2020, representing a compounded growth rate of 24%. Looking at assets under management and administration evolution on the right side of the slide, we see that we brought BRL 17.8 billion during the quarter and a total of BRL 96 billion during the full year of 2024. So close to BRL 100 billion of net new money for the asset management during 2024.

Most of the flows were directed to fixed income strategies managed by BTG Pactual Asset Management. As obviously, during 2024, we saw the reversal from an interest rate easing cycle to an interest rate tightening cycle, and also, we see that assets under management and administration grew 2.3% during the quarter and 16% when we compare to 2023, reaching a total of BRL 992 billion. And as Roberto just mentioned recently, we just reached BRL 1 trillion in asset management, and once again, when we look at the longer period of time, in the bottom right chart of the slide, we see that since 2020, our assets under management and under administration increased by 2.6 times, which represents a compounded growth rate of 27%, and here, we are voted best real estate manager, both for Brazil and for LatAm by Euromoney.

Moving now to wealth management and personal banking, we see that we had record revenues in 2024 with an impressive net inflows throughout the year. Revenues during the quarter reached BRL 964 million. That's a 4% decrease when we compare to the previous quarter, as we had a smaller number of business days during this quarter and also a long holiday period with Christmas and New Year making basically the last two weeks of the year with very little client activity along those two weeks. Looking at the full year numbers, we reached record revenues of BRL 3.8 billion. That's a 23% growth when we compare to 2023. If you look at the bottom left chart, we see the evolution of our revenues since 2020. Here, we can see that our revenues increased by 4.4 times during this period, which represents a compounded growth rate of 45%.

During the quarter, we managed to bring BRL 32 billion of net new money, which demonstrates the strength of our network in attracting new clients, even in this very volatile scenario. Throughout 2024, net new money totaled BRL 151 billion, once again demonstrating the strength of our network and our relationship managers despite the challenging macroeconomic scenario. Wealth under management passed the BRL 900 billion mark, reaching BRL 901 billion, which is a 5% increase when we compare to the previous quarter and a 26% increase when we compare to the fourth quarter of 2023. When we look at our wealth under management evolution since 2020, in the bottom right part of the slide, we see that wealth under management increased by 3.5 times, which represents a compounded growth rate of 37%.

Finally, more recently, we announced the acquisition of Julius Baer business here in Brazil with wealth under management of BRL 61 billion. With this transaction that obviously requires the customary regulatory approvals, which we expect to obtain in the next few months, once we complete this transaction, we will be managing more than BRL 100 billion in family office services. Going now to page 17, we look at the contribution of our participations. So we see here that EFG contributed with BRL 32 million during the quarter. Our stake in Too Seguros contributed with BRL 64 million. Then we have the three components of Banco Pan, with the equity pickup contribution of BRL 149 million for our stake in Banco Pan's profits. Then we have BRL 98 million from accruals related to the portfolios that we acquired in previous quarters.

Then we have the BRL 45 million elimination related to the portfolios that we acquired during the fourth quarter of 2024. So overall, we see a total contribution of BRL 298 million. That's a 37% increase when we compare to the third quarter of 2024. Going now to our expenses and main ratios in page 19, we see that we managed to reduce our cost income ratio for the full year of 2024, underlining the efficiency of our business model. During the fourth quarter, our cost income increased to 39% due to some year-end one-offs in administrative expenses. When we look at the full year, we see an adjusted cost income of 37.5%. That's a decrease from the 38.2%, which was the cost income of 2023, as we continue to gain efficiency as past investments start to mature over time.

During the quarter, bonus increased as a consequence of higher revenues, and salaries and benefits increased slightly due to the acquisition of Sertrading. Administrative and others, as mentioned before, increased, mostly related to one-off expenses, but also some impact of the Sertrading acquisition. And our effective tax rate for the quarter was 19.1%, and that was mostly impacted by the JCP distribution. Looking at the full year numbers, we see that bonus increased 11%, again related to the revenues increase. Salaries and benefits increased 18% as we continue to develop our businesses with the acquisitions Roberto described in the full year 2024 highlights. And administrative and others increased by 10%. And our effective tax rate remained stable at 19.8%, which is a similar level from the previous year.

Going now to page 21, looking at our balance sheet, total assets reached BRL 647 billion, which is 9.8 times our equity, a similar level from the previous quarter. We continue to maintain strong levels of liquidity with close to BRL 80 billion in cash and cash equivalents, and an LCR rating of 200%. Our coverage ratio remained stable at 161% as our unsecured funding base grows in line with our own balance sheet credit portfolio. And our corporate lending and SME lending portfolio now represents 3.9 times our equity. And the impact on our equity for the implementation of central bank Resolution 4966, which is similar to IFRS. So the impact is derived almost entirely from our stake in Banco Pan. We will record an impact of BRL 897 million, of which BRL 755 million comes directly from our stake in Banco Pan.

The largest component of the remaining BRL 142 million are also derived from the portfolios that we acquired from Banco Pan during the last few quarters. Overall, the impact on our Basel ratio will be only six basis points. Going now to our unsecured funding base on page 22, we see a very strong growth during the quarter with additional funding of BRL 9.2 billion. That's a 3.6% growth. The share of retail funding remained stable at 29%, and the demand deposits increased 14% to BRL 2.4 billion or BRL 2.4 billion in the quarter. When we look at full year numbers, we see that our funding grew 30%, and that's an additional BRL 61.7 billion of funding throughout the year.

And we managed to significantly increase our funding, and at the same time, we managed to reduce the overall cost of funding and also increase the maturity of our funding. Also, we see that demand deposits increased 62% during the quarter. That's an additional BRL 7.3 billion of demand deposits, and now they represent 7.2% of our total funding base. And when we look at the evolution of our funding base in the right side of the slide, we see that our total funding increased by 2.5 times since 2020, and that's a compounded growth rate of 25%. And our retail funding share of total funding increased from 12% in 2020 to 29% in 2024. That means that our retail funding went from around BRL 12 billion in 2020 to close to BRL 80 billion now.

So our retail funding increased by 6.5 times, and that's a 60% compounded growth rate since 2020. This is important because it represents the significant transformation in our unsecured funding base. And in October, we successfully issued a five-year senior unsecured note in the total amount of $500 million at only 34 basis points above Brazil's sovereign spreads. And finally, looking at our Basel ratio on page 23, we see that we closed the year with total Basel ratio of 15.7% after the distribution of JCP of BRL 1.72 billion. Our Tier 1 ratio closed the year at 12.3%. And again, as we mentioned a few times during the presentation, our VaR reached our lowest historical level at 13 basis points as we maintain a conservative risk approach due to recent market activity. So I think with that, we can open up for questions, right?

Operator

Yes. Thank you.

The floor is now open for questions from investors and analysts. If you have a question, click raise hand at this time. If at any point your question is answered, you can remove yourself from the queue by clicking lower hand. Questions will be taken in the order that they are received. Please hold while we poll for questions. The first question comes from Daniel Vaz with Banco Safra. Please go ahead.

Daniel Vaz
Lead Equity Research Analyst, Banco Safra

Hi everyone. Can you hear me, please?

Roberto Sallouti
CEO, Banco BTG Pactual

Yes, we can, Daniel.

Daniel Vaz
Lead Equity Research Analyst, Banco Safra

Okay. Thank you. Good morning. Good morning, Sallouti. Good morning, Cohn. Congrats on the results. I wanted to touch point on your ROE expansion that you mentioned on your presentation for 2025. I wanted to pick your brain on that. Is it primarily driven by cost to income improvements or higher leverage?

I mean, given that the DI yield, the long-term interest rates in Brazil is high enough to support a payout above the 30%, are you also factoring this into the ROE expansion as well? So can you give us a color here? Very helpful. Thank you.

Roberto Sallouti
CEO, Banco BTG Pactual

Sure. Thank you, Daniel. No, actually, we expect to continue the trend of growth that we saw in the recent years in asset management, in wealth management, in credit. We expect sales and trading to go back to growth. And all of these growths, we expect to be higher than our costs, of course. But is it because we expect to grow equity less? No, it's the contrary. We expect our franchises to continue growing.

I think, of course, if you look at all the trends that we showed in the graphs, the only one that has not been showing consistent growth is Investment Banking because that's probably the market where it's harder for us to gain market share because we already had historically a high market share. In all the new markets, in all the other markets we are present, we still have low market shares. So as we continue to grow, gain market share, we expect to continue growing consistently. We expect to continue benefiting from technology, from gains in productivity, from gains in processes and controls, and thus to be able to have costs growing at a slower pace than revenues.

Daniel Vaz
Lead Equity Research Analyst, Banco Safra

Okay. So there's no leverage indicators here. I mean, if we look at our CET1 ratio at the end of the year, you expect to maintain it at this level?

Roberto Sallouti
CEO, Banco BTG Pactual

Yeah.

What we've always told you, right? The efficient frontier would be to have a total capital ratio of 12, and I say 3% of Tier 2. Tier 1 . Tier 1 . Tier 1 at 12 and 15 total capital ratio. That's the efficient frontier. We're never at the efficient frontier. You're always a bit more conservative, but we expect to continue around the levels that we are currently.

Daniel Vaz
Lead Equity Research Analyst, Banco Safra

Perfect. Thanks a lot.

Operator

The next question comes from Mario Pierry with Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Mario Pierry
Managing Director, Bank of America

Good morning, everybody. Congrats on the results. Let me go back to your comments about ROE expansion in 2025, if you can help us with the magnitude of the increase, because I think your ROE only improved about 40 basis points in 2024. So trying to understand, are we talking about the same type of growth in 2025, or do you think that can accelerate?

Let me ask another question as well. I think part of this ROE expansion in 2025 has to come from sales and trading improving, right? As you showed on your presentation, sales and trading has been quite weak. Your VaR is quite low. What gives you confidence that the 2025 is going to be better than 2024? And also, were there any gains related to the Eneva transaction booked in sales and trading in the fourth quarter? Thank you.

Roberto Sallouti
CEO, Banco BTG Pactual

Thank you, Mario. As you know, we are not very fans of giving many guidances, but we feel very comfortable in saying that we will have ROE expansion. And we think that sincerely, even if sales and trading does not grow significantly, we will still have significant ROE expansion.

Because when we look at our budget, we're quite comfortable that even though, let's say, some areas don't perform according to the budget, we will still be able to deliver there. As I mentioned previously, we have invested a lot in the last few years. We continue to invest a lot. For example, we have currently expenses in euros and in dollars related to the banking operations that we're setting up, which are still not producing any significant revenues. We have various initiatives where the investment comes up front, and over time, the revenues come and you gain scale, and since we invested in many new products, many new segments, many new geographies, we have different initiatives at different points of the J curve, and this is what makes us very comfortable that we see ROE expansion. It can be depending on how things go.

It can be closer to what it was this year, or it can be closer to what it was between, let's say, 2022 and 2023. But right now, we're just comfortable in giving the guidance that we expect to continue delivering ROE expansion. And on your second question regarding Eneva, sincerely, the results of Eneva and the thermal plans were in line to what they have been in the last few quarters.

Mario Pierry
Managing Director, Bank of America

Okay. Very clear. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. The next question comes from Thiago Batista with UBS BB. Please go ahead.

Thiago Batista
Executive Director and Head of Br Research, UBS BB

Hi guys. Congratulations for the results. I have one question about the DCM or the IB business. One of the CEOs of one of your competitors mentioned last week that DCM should contract 30%-40% in 2025. How you guys are seeing the outlook for the IB, especially for the DCM business in Brazil?

Renato Cohn
CFO and Investor Relations Officer, Banco BTG Pactual

Hi, Thiago.

I think it's obviously we heard the comments, and I think maybe it's too early to say, right? I think January is not the best month, right? It's usually a vacation month for companies and for investors. So I wouldn't take the level of activity in January as the best indication for DCM activity throughout the year, right? What we can see is that DCM has been continuously developing with more transactions coming to the market, new companies coming to the market, larger volumes in transactions, longer terms. So it's been a market that for the last few years has been developing. Can it be that it slows down a little bit this year? Yes, it can, right? We'll have a new interest rate cycle that obviously puts pressure on companies.

But I think it's still too early days to call for a percentage number in terms of either decline, stability, or small increase. I think January is not the best month to reflect that.

Thiago Batista
Executive Director and Head of Br Research, UBS BB

Very clear, Renato. Thank you.

Operator

The next question comes from Yuri Fernandes with JP Morgan. Please go ahead.

Yuri Fernandes
Executive Director Equity Research, JPMorgan

Hi guys. Hi Sallouti, Cohn, Julia. Congrats for the year. I have a question on corporate lending. 2024 was a great year, but we have this more challenging macro. You have been growing loans around 30%. So just trying to get some color on how you are thinking about this line in 2025. We should see some deceleration, how you see spreads. And just to follow up on the ROE expansion, why everybody's asking about this, right?

Because any 40-50 bips ROE expansion for you matters a lot for earnings growth, even if you don't pay huge dividends, right? So your book value grows a lot in line with your earnings. So for you to deliver 50-100 bips ROE expansion, you need to have pretty bold earnings growth. So this is why everybody's trying to have some color. And if you can provide any more color here, I think it's going to be appreciated by the market because this can imply some upside risk for the consultants. So thank you, corporate and ROE.

Roberto Sallouti
CEO, Banco BTG Pactual

Thank you, Yuri. So I'm going to start with the second part of your question. Well, at least you guys have a floor of what we're quite confident that we can deliver, right?

If we're not very big fans of giving guidance, whenever we give guidance, it's because we have a very strong conviction that we can deliver at least that, if not surpass the guidance given. And you're right, right? As our book value increases, I completely understand and agree with you that any 50 bips is a big deal. It makes a difference in monetary terms. But at the moment, this is the guidance we're comfortable in giving. Let's see as the year develops, maybe we can give something more granular. On the second point on corporate lending, we're still quite comfortable that we can continue to grow, let's say, around 20% for this year.

And it's important to say that the growth we showed last year, we had very little growth, especially in the last quarter, in Brazil, let's say, large corporate segment, because we thought spreads were too tight, markets a bit challenging, interest rates going up. So we were able to grow in the other geographies. Our ex-Brazil portfolio is now more than 20% of our total portfolio. We continue to expand. We continue to buy some portfolios from Banco Pan. We continue to expand in SME. So the last thing we want is for our business to be a beta credit Brazil business. So we're very, it's a beta Brazil large corporate business.

So we're very focused on continuing to penetrate new segments, geographies, and products so that we're able to continue delivering this size of growth, but still have an alpha approach where we're not targeting market share, we're not targeting total disbursements, but we're targeting to, yes, increase the portfolio, but where the risk-adjusted return makes sense given the environment we're seeing. So with that, we want to continue having the flexibility of having variants to segments, to geographies, and to companies depending on the scenario that we are forecasting.

Yuri Fernandes
Executive Director Equity Research, JPMorgan

Super clear. Thank you very much.

Operator

The next question comes from Gustavo Schroden with Citi. Please go ahead.

Gustavo Schroden
Equity Research Director, Citi

Hi, good morning, everybody. Hi, good morning. Good morning, everybody. Congrats on the results. My question is regarding; it's just a follow-up on corporate lending because, of course, I hear what you said. But what is different here?

Because when we compare with the speech from especially large and incumbent banks, we see a speech totally different. So just to follow up here, what is different? It's only the client profile, or do you believe that it is a good time to gain market share? So any thoughts here to understand what's different when we compare the BTG's strategy in corporate lending versus incumbent banks or large banks? And my second question is regarding our asset and wealth management business, so another strong quarter in terms of net new money. So could you give us a color for what we should expect for 2025 in terms of net new money? So should we expect the same trends quarter by quarter? And if the main market share that you are gaining is still from large banks or different institutions that you have gained market share? Thank you.

Renato Cohn
CFO and Investor Relations Officer, Banco BTG Pactual

Hi, Gustavo.

Thank you for the question. I think related to our corporate lending portfolio growth that you asked, I think we cannot be compared like for like with the large retail banks, right? The large retail banks have a different mix of credit portfolios. They have much more exposure to unsecured, uncollateralized individual consumer loans, credit card loans. They have more exposure, larger exposure to SMEs, unsecured loans. And we are much more focused on large corporate credit transactions. Also, our SME portfolio is collateralized. So it's a different type of portfolio mix that we have compared to the large retail banks. And also, our market share is smaller, right? So for large corporates, we already have a significant market share, and we believe that we can grow. For SME, we are market share and the range of products that we cover today.

We feel very comfortable that we still can grow market share within those segments, continue to expand in the market with good credit quality, maintaining basically the credit quality that we have. On the second question related to net new money, as I usually say, right? Net new money is a battle every day, right? So very difficult to give predictions of net new money. We've been quite consistent on net new money for the wealth management segment in the last close now, I think, to 12 quarters, right? With around BRL 30 billion of net new money in the last few years. And in asset management, the net new money has been a little bit more volatile depending on market cycles. So in our view, that shows the strength of our network, the network that we created, and also our relationship managers.

We believe that they will be able to continue to attract net new money. Related to the market share or who we are gaining market share, there's no major difference from the past. I think we're gaining market share from the various competitors. And we have, when we look at the size of the portfolio of our competitors, it's pretty much aligned with that. There's no specific segment or institution that we see a concentration there.

Gustavo Schroden
Equity Research Director, Citi

Great. Thank you very much.

Operator

The next question comes from Renato Meloni of Autonomous Research. Please go ahead.

Renato Meloni
Senior Analyst, Autonomous Research

Hi, everyone. Congrats here on the numbers for the year. So I'd just like to first stay here on the net new money question, right? So you've been gaining share. You don't necessarily kind of form everyone, but when do you expect this to normalize, right?

I think it's been consistent years of growth, but the market is more consolidated. I think there's more competition as well. So if you can give us maybe some perspective on that and also kind of like the main risks for this year in terms of attracting new money. And then my second question here is just a follow-up on the question that Mario asked. He was asking about the impact of the Eneva deal in sales and trading. I didn't quite get the answer if you're offering a number here. Thank you.

Roberto Sallouti
CEO, Banco BTG Pactual

Thank you, Renato. So I'll answer the first part of the question. I'll let Renato Cohn address the second one. So what is the target of the market share and the net new money we can attract?

Look, sincerely, this is very hard to determine, but as we all look at the different market shares and sizes of the different players in the region, and until we are the number one player, we think we can continue gaining market share to reach there. That's always our goal. That's always our ambition, and time will tell if we're going to be able to do this or not. Talking about risks for the net new money, in our view, I think clearly the biggest risk we are seeing is the competition from the tax-exempt fixed income products that the retail banks are able to offer their clients. With this level of interest rates and with tax-exempt products, this is probably, I would say, the biggest risk both to the wealth management net new money, but also to the asset management net new money.

Renato Cohn
CFO and Investor Relations Officer, Banco BTG Pactual

Renato, related to Eneva, what Roberto mentioned is that there's no significant change in the impacts of what the thermal power plants used to contribute in the last few quarters to now the new situation where we don't have the power plants anymore, but we have a larger stake in Eneva. So it was pretty much a similar contribution this quarter than what we used to see from the contributions of the power plant and a smaller stake in Eneva that we have.

Renato Meloni
Senior Analyst, Autonomous Research

So you didn't recognize any gains on the sales and trading revenue related to the deal?

Renato Cohn
CFO and Investor Relations Officer, Banco BTG Pactual

There is a small recognition, but again, it's not significant, right? So that's

Roberto Sallouti
CEO, Banco BTG Pactual

the delta of the results of this complex is not significant to previous quarters. I think that's the point Cohn was trying to make.

Renato Meloni
Senior Analyst, Autonomous Research

Yeah. Perfect. Understood. Thanks.

Operator

The next question comes from Tiago Binsfeld with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Tiago Binsfeld
Equity Research, Goldman Sachs

Hi, good morning. Sallouti, Cohn, Julia. We wanted to go back to expenses a little bit. This was another good year for expenses. You have been gaining operating leverage since at least 2021, so good job on that. But when you look at the quarter, efficiency ratio picked up a little bit. So first, if you could discuss a little bit what drove this quarterly pickup, is this related to the recent acquisitions that you made? And second, if you could discuss your expectations into 2025. We know you don't give formal guidance, but just help us understand expectations and main levers behind it. Thank you.

Renato Cohn
CFO and Investor Relations Officer, Banco BTG Pactual

Thank you, Tiago. Yeah, so what you mentioned for the quarter increase in expenses, there are mostly two impacts there. One is the acquisition of Sertrading.

Obviously, this is the first quarter that we consolidate Sertrading in our numbers. So there is an impact there, and also, there are some one-offs. Usually, every end of the year, there are some additional one-offs there. These are, I would say, the main two contributions for the expense increase. Not sure I picked up the second part of the question. Can you?

Tiago Binsfeld
Equity Research, Goldman Sachs

Yeah, exactly.

Roberto Sallouti
CEO, Banco BTG Pactual

Once again, I think we don't give specific guidance on the contributions, but let's put it this way. The recent trends will probably not be very different from the past trends, both in revenues and in costs, and that's why we're confident to continue to benefit from operational leverage.

Tiago Binsfeld
Equity Research, Goldman Sachs

Got it. Thank you so much.

Operator

Thank you. The next question comes from Pedro Leduc with Itaú BBA. Please go ahead.

Pedro Leduc
Brazil Financials Equity Research, Itaú BBA

Thank you. Good morning, everybody. A question on wealth management, please.

Great net new money quarter of the year, but just on a Q&Q basis, revenues did decline, which is a bit odd in the light that you have the maturation effect from the prior cohorts, and markets were pretty good. You had more money. So just to help us better understand what drove this volatility in the line, if it's the new nature of a new client profile or new channel that you have that will make this line more volatile, ultimately, how should we think about it in 2025 if revenues here could pace at least with the pace of AUC or there will be more volatility expected? Thank you.

Renato Cohn
CFO and Investor Relations Officer, Banco BTG Pactual

Hi, Pedro. Thank you for the question. I think the main impacts there, first, obviously, there is a technical that we had two business days less than the third quarter.

Third quarter was a very strong quarter with the highest number of business days in the year. So that's one impact. The second impact I mentioned also is the last two weeks of the year were very, very quiet, right? With very little market activity during those two weeks because of the holiday season, Christmas and New Year. Both were at Wednesdays, if I'm not mistaken, so middle of the week. So the entire two weeks were impacted there. I think, and maybe a third is that third quarter was a strong quarter, right? It grew a lot during third quarter. So the combination of the three resulted in this small reduction in terms of revenues when compared to the third quarter. But we don't believe that we'll see more volatility related to that. I think there will be a link between the AUM growth.

I think it will be aligned with the revenue growth.

Pedro Leduc
Brazil Financials Equity Research, Itaú BBA

That's great. Can I follow up here if you can help us maybe understand how the mix changed between your AUC 2024 relative to the other years, maybe B2C, B2B, just a rough sense how it changed?

Renato Cohn
CFO and Investor Relations Officer, Banco BTG Pactual

No, it's nothing different from what we've seen in the past. Obviously, the high-income retail segment where we have a smaller market share continues to grow faster than the ultra-high net worth. It's not that the ultra-high net worth don't grow. It grew a lot also this year. But obviously, because of the size of our market share and the opportunity, our high-income retail segment, which includes the B2C, the B2B channels that you mentioned, they grow at a faster pace in percentage terms than the ultra-high net worth, which is a well-established business for many, many years, right?

Pedro Leduc
Brazil Financials Equity Research, Itaú BBA

Okay. Thank you.

Operator

Our last question comes from Mario Pierry with Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Mario Pierry
Managing Director, Bank of America

Guys, thanks for taking another question from me. I wanted to focus a little bit on the capital ratio, the Common Equity Tier 1 ratio, down 50 basis points quarter on quarter, 70 basis points year on year to 11.8%. Again, you talked about, right, having a capital or a Tier 1 ratio of 12% as your target. So you're very close to that. You are consuming capital, right? Your risk-weighted assets grew 25% in 2024. So how do you plan on increasing your capital ratio, or could we see an impact on your payout ratio in 2025? And can I also ask, you talked about the impact of Resolution 4966 of BRL 900 million on Banco Pan, but that should be effective as of January 1st, or am I mistaken?

Can you give us an update? What was your capital ratio as of January 1st? Thank you.

Renato Cohn
CFO and Investor Relations Officer, Banco BTG Pactual

Hi, Mario. So I think what you saw here in our capital ratios is stability for, I think, close to three years, right? We've been around this core Tier 1 and Tier 1 capital ratio for a very long period of time. And during this period, we grew significantly our credit portfolio. What happened this quarter? Obviously, this cannot be maintained 100% stable quarter over quarter. There are some variations there. This year, we grew the credit portfolio by 30%, right? So it's a significant growth of the credit portfolio. And even with that growth, we managed to maintain stable capital ratios. Obviously, there is a small decrease during this quarter, mostly related to we pay the JCP, right? So there are components of volatility there. But we are not worried.

I think that the profitability that the overall business provides and the consistency that we see in profitability for the next few quarters are sufficient for us to sustain the level of growth that we expect to have. Regarding next or this first quarter, right, I think you asked about the impacts of Resolution 4966. So they are not recorded in these numbers that we are seeing because the impact will be as of January 1st, right? And as I mentioned, the impact will be only six basis points for us, right? The impact in the equity is close to the BRL 900 million you mentioned, BRL 897 million. But you remember that there is this phase-in from a decision of the central bank that will phase in the impact during the next four years. So just six basis points of impact.

We have to remember that during the first quarter of 2025, we won't pay JCP. So the increase in equity will be higher than what we see and what we saw in the fourth quarter of 2024.

Roberto Sallouti
CEO, Banco BTG Pactual

And just to be clear, we don't expect to change the payout policy that we've been using, which is 25% of income or JCP, whichever is the biggest one of both. And we think that that allows us to not only have enough capital, but actually, it might even allow us to accumulate more conservative ratios.

Mario Pierry
Managing Director, Bank of America

Great, guys. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you very much. That brings us to the end of the question and answer session. I will now return the floor to Mr. Roberto Sallouti for his closing remarks. Thank you. Have a nice one.

Roberto Sallouti
CEO, Banco BTG Pactual

Thank you, everyone, for joining our full year 2024 results call.

We hope you all have a great week and look forward to talking to you again at the end of Q1. Thank you very much.

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